Bad Block?

[Dale Bessant]

Having a bit of a problem with my Nero program, it tends to freeze a lot lately and will not record on CD-R or CD-RW's, then it will burn a CD with no problem....then it freezes up again....when I checked the history of the Toshiba 'burner' all it says is something about a "bad block"...any ideas what this could mean?
I have uninstalled it and re-installed it numerous times but it does no good, still the same problem...

[Earnest Bovine]

My intermittent disk burning failures got worse and worse until I bought a new burner drive. Well, actually I had to buy and return 3 or 4 before I found one that works. I know that you are looking for a free solution but in my experience there is just a lot of unreliable hardware out there.

[Dale Bessant]

Thanks Earnest, your probably right, I think when they "Bundle" these programs with a CD burner they most likely have "issues" with these programs...

[Jeff Hyman]

Is the bad block error on the CD or HD?
Is there a block number? If yes, is the block number the same every time?
If the CD is the problem, can you format it first? ... or is there a way to throttle down its write speed?

[John Cipriano]

Yeah, like Jeff said a slower burn speed might help things. And if you're using rewritable discs, be warned that the number of times you can write over them is nowhere near what they advertise.

Nero used to be good But they don't bundle it because it's bad or anything. They all work about the same for basic tasks in my opinion (roxio, sonic, etc).

If you want to try other software:

Data CDs: try the built-in Windows way...put in a blank CD, right click and hit open from My Computer. Put files on the CD, then click "burn" on the left.

Audio CDs: Windows Media Player can do this. I think you have to make a playlist and then burn the playlist, not sure. iTunes will also burn a playlist to a CD.

I like InfraRecorder as a free CD burning software that is sort of like what Nero used to be like.

http://infrarecorder.org/?page_id=4